Cash, Dylan – And Some New Wave Nashville Cats

NASHVILLE Cats? A loose collective of sessions aces recruited to record some of rock’s greatest classics – in the hostile heartland of country music. That was back in the sixties and seventies after the fearless Johnny Cash invited Bob Dylan to share a stage with him and the floodgates opened... Dylan himself, the Byrds, Neil Young, Simon and Garfunkel, yikes, even Leonard Cohen, hit the studios.

 It’s a sign of changing times that the unsung Cats are finally given their due in a stupendous exhibition at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame. It’s a kind of retrospective truce in this bastion of the country establishment. 

Here down home legends are celebrated with showcases of rhinestone and Nudie suits, boots and stetsons, Tammy’s frocks and Dolly’s bodice, the whole fetishistic hoedown culminating in a mausoleum-like centrepiece. A plaque here means you’re up there in the constellation of country stars.

It’s all wonderful kitschy fun, but the hidden hippy in me was glad of the Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats (on until 2016, it’s included in the Hall of Fame ticket price), with its booths offering a huge range of music at the press of a button.

It’s a reminder Music City has always had a cooler side. Today the likes of Jack White and the Black Keys call Nashville home and hipster-centric East Nashville is a world away from the hat acts of Music Row and Broadway’s honky tonks.

Still our first recce of country music’s capital had to be along its tourist strip. Broadway, despite its name, is curiously unglitzy. Everyone seems to be carrying a guitar, if not playing one; you imagine every waitress is an embryo Taylor Swift. We hung out in two very contrasting joints. Acme Feed & Seed is a converted riverside warehouse housing events spaces, cocktail and craft beer bars, even an artisan food shop, plus, of course, music stages, including a self-styled first floor ‘funkytonk’, representing Nashville’s diverse music scene. Best of all is its rooftop terrace overlooking the Cumberland River.

Nashville has most churches per capita than any other US city; below, and line dancing classes!

Mid-morning line dance class

Totally different is Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, a 10 minute stroll up Broadway. Take in a band and walls packed with mementos of the great country acts that played here before they were famous. 

Take Willie Nelson, desperate and hitting the bottle until a Tootsie’s gig impressed the residents and earned him a songwriting job . The rest is country music history (there’s a lot of it about here). 

Outlaw Willie moved on to Austin, Texas, but Nashville boasts an informal Willie Museum and Friends General Store up on McGavock Pike.

Cash baby-gros

More impressive, and conveniently placed just off Broadway, is the new Johnny Cash Museum, as comprehensive a collection of the Man In Black’s artefacts as you could wish for. With verything from the German primer from his time as a serviceman overseas to clips from his acting career, it’s a fascinating introduction to a complex man and great artist. The museum store is quirky, too. Who could resist purchasing a ‘Crawl The Line’ baby-gro?

Ryman Auditorium has playd host to some incedible acts

Equally moving is the nearby Ryman Auditorium. Thomas Green Ryman built it in 1890 as the Union Gospel Tabernacle, but it was soon given over to popular entertainment, eventually in 1943 becoming home to the sensationally successful country radio show Grand Ole Opry. For three decades it hosted Cash, Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline and – look her up – the wackily subversive folksy comedienne Minnie Pearl. Bluegrass was also born here. The Opry moved out to new premises in 1974 – 20 years later it was sensitively renovated and is still one of the world’s great music venues. If you can’t make a gig, go there for the ghosts.

Clarion foyer

‘King of the Road’, Roger Miller, haunted our Nashville base, The Clarion. A Tootsie’s graduate and purveyor of that great popular hit of the Sixties, Miller is celebrated in the hotel because he built it back in 1964. The current owners have spent $5 million refurbishing the public areas in hallucinatory quasi-sixties fashion. We loved it for the quirkiness and because it was equally handy for Downtown and for the hip hub that is East Nashville.

Rumours East is a lovely bolthole with good food

Laid-back, artsy Five Points is a 10-minute taxi ride away. It’s the hub of East Nashville’s alternative scene, full of good casual restaurants, craft beer bars, coffee shops, artisan ice cream and bakeries, leftfield shopping and the kind of creative community that protects the historic neighbourhood, all porches and leafy back lanes. I Dream of Weenie, hot dogs from a VW bus on South 11th Street, or Mas Tacos Por Favor, Mexican street food in lo-fi surroundings on McFerrin Avenue, both sort of sum it up; we dined in more upmarket farm-to-table style in the gorgeous garden of Rumours East, just behind the Idea Hatchery, a conglomerate of vintage boutiques. 

Joints like the Village Pub and The Family Wash offer great beer and food, while Fond Object Records combines vinyl and magazine sales with live bands and a barnyard petting zoo. For craft coffee look no further than Barista Parlor at 519 Gallatin Avenue, set in an old transmission shop.

Golden Sound – craft coffee in East Nashville

Their second outlet shows the hipster tentacles of East Nashville spreading out to new cool areas. Located in the Gulch on Magazine Street, Golden Sound was previously a thriving recording studio, but has now been transformed into a full roasting room and coffee bar, again showcasing local artists. It has been set up in partnershp Dan Auerbach of he Black Keys, part of Nashville’s new wave of musical invaders. 

Jack White's Third Man Records is full of quirky rock mementos and vinyl

Five minutes’ walk away (if you don’t stop off at the Jackalope brewery tap en route) is the prime icon of ‘rockification’ in the city – Third Man Records, the analogue-centric studios and decidedly chi-chi retro cord shop owned by Jack White of the White Stripes and countless other projects.

One recent release was Neil Young’s ‘A Letter Home, “an unheard collection of rediscovered songs from the past recorded on ancient electro-mechanical technology”.

The songs were captured, hisses, crackles and all, on White’s lo-fi Voice-O-Graph recording booth. A new Cat on the block and a maverick old master – now that’s what I call Nashville.

Big hat choice in Downtown Nashville

Follow the first three sections of Neil Sowerby’s Deep South Road Trip – New Orleans, Cajun Country and the Natchez Trace Parkway. 

 Country Music Hall of Fame – a gallery